Intel Embraces Hackathons With Acquisition

Courting programmers is not a new concept for Intel, which needs to make sure its chip technology is understood and exploited by software developers. Now the company is embracing an additional element of coder culture, the hackathon.

The Silicon Valley giant, through its recently acquired Mashery unit, on Tuesday confirmed it has also purchased the assets of Hacker League, a tiny company that developed an online platform for managing such hacking events. Terms aren’t being disclosed.

Hackathons, as their name suggests, typically offer a contest to develop software or solve assigned programming problems in a fixed period of time, frequently eight to 48 hours. The results are judged, prizes are awarded, and programmers get to build reputations among their peers and potential employers.

Abe Stanway and the other two co-founders of Hacker League–Mike Swift and Ian Jennings–attended Rutgers University together. They used to attend hackathons and realized that what was missing was a common repository of the key information needed to run one–and to save the creations programmers make during the events.

“There was no platform to store the hacks, and we decided to build it,” Stanway says.

To understand how all this fits into Intel’s goals, it helps to know a bit more about Mashery. The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2006 and acquired by Intel last May, is an outgrowth of the new ways that all kinds of companies are working with APIs, or application programming interfaces.

These recipe kits for making programs were once mainly the concern of companies that sell commercial software products. But now all kinds of companies want to manage work by both internal developers–who often are working on add-ons to websites or mobile apps–and outsiders that are often allowed to work with the companies’ data.

Mashery specializes in the management of APIs for all kinds of companies, listing names like Comcast, Best Buy and ESPN. That helps build various kinds of bridges for Intel, which is trying to build relationships with developers at all kinds of companies.

Hackathons are a good way to do that, says Delyn Simons, head of developer relations at Mashery. Its employees attend about 60 a year, such as a recent event in San Francisco that sought to develop apps associated with the future of food.

By buying the Hacker League assets, Mashery–and by extension Intel–gets another way to build cred among coders.

“Any tool that removes friction and allows developers to get their hands on data more quickly is a good thing,” says Delyn Simons, head of developer relations at Mashery.

Hacker League’s founders, who have long worked on other projects at the same time, are not joining Mashery, Stanway says.